


An Open Letter to Vince Gilligan, or, Get The Hell Away From Me With Your Scully Torture Porn: X-Files, "Roadrunners"

by PlaidAdder



Series: X-Files Meta [22]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Gender, Meta, Nonfiction, Pregnancy, Season Eight, roadrunners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 02:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2133996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesus, Vince. Pregnancy scares you guys, doesn’t it? </p><p>I mean, that’s what I assume from the fact that once Scully is pregnant the first thing that occurs to you to do with her is write a nice little episode in which she’s forcibly impregnated with a slug that’s supposed to be the Second Coming of Christ.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Open Letter to Vince Gilligan, or, Get The Hell Away From Me With Your Scully Torture Porn: X-Files, "Roadrunners"

 

 

Dear Vince Gilligan,

You were one of the best writers on the X-Files. You wrote so many of the episodes I loved so much. “Pusher”—such a great piece, such great work you got out of the two leads on that one—and “Bad Blood,” and “Small Potatoes,” and so many others. And yet, as I went through the first seven seasons of this rewatch, I found myself often wishing I could just sit you down and ask you some questions. And most of them had to do with your use of Scully. Why, I wanted to ask, does she, at the end of your episodes, so often wind up drunk (“Small Potatoes”), drugged (“Bad Blood”), zonked to the gills with some kind of bimbo juice (“Three of a Kind”), and put in a situation where she is easy prey for one or, as in “Three of a Kind,” several men who are still in full control of their faculties and willing to take advantage of her impaired condition? Or as the kids would put it in this more consciousness-raised 21st century, rape her? Am I making too much of this, I asked myself? Am I, like Mulder and Scully, trying too hard to create a meaningful pattern where none exists?

But of course, at that point, I had never seen 98% of season eight. Which means I hadn’t seen “Roadrunners.” Which you wrote. And in which, after a promisingly creepy Twilight Zoney beginning, you manage to have Scully:

1) Attacked and physically restrained by a gang of mostly male Creepy Villagers.

2) Forced to witness a brutal murder.

3) Screaming at the crowd not to hurt her because she’s “going to have a baby.” 

4) Thrown face down on a bed, tied to it hand and foot, and caressed by the lead Creepy Villager while screaming in agony. And then gagged.

5) While thus tied to this nasty bed, and surrounded by onlookers, penetrated through a circular opening by a phallic sluglike creature whose “him”-ness is made great play of in the dialogue. (“Him?” Scully shouts at them. “That thing in my spine is a HIM?”)

6) Forced to listen to the head Creepy Villager in charge of this violation about how much they will love her because she is the host of a masculine parasite.

7) Rescued by her male partner, who has to carry her out of the room Gone-With-The-Wind-style because she can’t walk.

8) And who also has to literally slash the back of her neck open and pull the fucking thing out and then shoot it.

And all so that she can be forced to concede, at the end of the episode, that she was wrong to think that she could handle what was supposed to be a routine consultation with a police department without bringing along a man for protection.

Vince, you have a problem. You need help. And Scully needs a TRO. You can’t be doing that shit to her, Vince. You really can’t.

Yeah. She’s been taken captive before. Mulder’s had to rescue her before. It got worse as the show goes on. Yeah. But compare, say, “Unruhe,” where she is  _almost_ ice-pick-lobotomied but manages to stall the killer long enough for Mulder to discover her by of all things speaking German, to THIS fucking scenario, in which Doggett arrives to save her only after she has been symbolically gang-raped, and maybe you can see why I think your illness has entered an acute phase?

Jesus. Ten minutes into the episode I”m thinking well, you know what, maybe watching Scully without Mulder will be better than I would have thought from the Batboy episode. Scully on her own. Sisters doing it for themselves. Scully handling shit without a guy there to tell her what they’re investigating and why. Scully being the one they call first, instead of her male partner. I can see an upside here. I mean sure, probably Doggett will come in at the last minute, I see that coming, seen it so often, but then Scully also got to save Mulder’s ass a lot, so…

And then the current host said, “We’re going to need another swap.” And I thought…oh dear. Well, that’s all right, Doggett will save her in time. And then I thought, CHRIST ALMIGHTY! JESUS CHRIST! They can’t…they’re not gonna…that can’t be…AAAAGH! FUCKING…AAAAAAAUGH!!!!

But you could, and you did, and it was…and I kind of feel like I oughta throw up just from having watched that. Who knows, if this review goes on long enough, I might.

Jesus, Vince. Pregnancy scares the FUCK out of you guys, doesn’t it? 

I mean, that’s what I assume from the fact that once Scully is pregnant the first thing that occurs to you to do with her is write a nice little episode in which she’s forcibly impregnated with a slug that’s supposed to be the Second Coming of Christ. And which fucking Doggett has to deliver via C-section. This is what pregnancy makes you think of, isn’t it? Parasites and bloody holes and tearing people open. For crying out loud…I mean sure. Yes. It’s weird. It’s uncanny in many ways. It’s scary. But really…the nightmares you guys have about it…could you just…I mean…read a few books, or something? And find out what it’s actually like? And maybe sleep better at night so that maybe *I* can sleep a little better at night than I’m going to be sleeping tonight?

*yoga breathing*

You know, I thought the problem with this season was going to be trying not to be annoyed by Doggett. I am discovering that I actually don’t really mind Doggett that much, though I do miss Mulder. My biggest problem, apparently, is going to be YOU. And by you, I mean the writers. Because I very much doubt, on the evidence of episodes 1-4, that you all are too interested in seeing Scully on her own. I think actually the prospect of having her become the protagonist kind of weirds you out and is going to provoke you to ever more crazy attempts to reassure yourselves that she really can’t do this without a man. 

Although if they get much crazier than “Roadrunners,” I don’t think I’m going to make it to the end.

Get help, Vince. Seriously. Before it’s too late.

Oh wait. This is a rewatch. IT IS ALREADY TOO LATE!

Damn.

Yours in WTFery,

Plaidder


End file.
